OHNNY VAN HAEFTEN, Britain’s leading dealer in Dutch Old Masters, is bursting with enthusiasm. ‘Here’s the Guinness World Record,’ he says, pulling a certificate from a packed bookshelf. ‘Look, it’s the world’s most expensive biscuit!’ He is pointing to a thick square sledging biscuit in a display case, the type taken on polar explorations 100 years ago. It sits beneath an ice pick and a battered old sledge, all from the 1907–09 Nimrod expedition to Antarctica led by Ernest Shackleton. The dealer’s 20-year-old great uncle, Sir Philip Brocklehurst, was the assistant geologist. We are looking at the biscuit in Mr Van Haeften’s office, the walls lined with polar photographs
